Spektrum Industri, 2012, Vol. 10, No. 2 108-199 ISSN : 1963-6590 183 A STUDY OF THE ROLE OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN GREEN MARKETING Reza Esmaeilpour, Ramezanali Mobasher Amini, Nazanin Emamgholi, Department of Management Guilan University, Iran resmaeilpour@gmail.com , rmobasheramini@gmail.com , nazaninemamgholi@gmail.com Abstract Customer relationship management is considered as a strategic necessity in all organizations. Today, companies and organizations have to consider the preservation of environment in their activities in order to gain customers’ satisfaction, perform social responsibilities, and protect consumers’ rights. Regarding these green marketing mixtures, the present research aims at studying the role of customer relationship management as a competitive advantage in green marketing on health and cosmetic products. Here, four marketing mixtures (product, promotion, place, and price) were defined as the research variables. Out of the total subjects that included all shops selling these products in the city of Rasht, a sample population of 131 shopkeepers was chosen to indicate the degree of their attention to selling green products and the degree of customers’ attention to buying green products. The present research is an analytic-descriptive one. A researcher- made questionnaire standardized through Cronbach’s alpha was used to collect data. Then, the data collected were analyzed by SPSS 15, t-test of tow independent samples, and variance analysis. It was finally indicated that there was meaningful relationship between customer relationship management and the mixture elements of green marketing. Key terms: Customer relationship management, Green marketing, Competitive advantage, Green marketing mixture I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, companies and organizations have to consider issues related to the preservation of environment in their activities in order to gain customers’ satisfaction, perform social responsibilities, and protect consumers’ rights. [6] Since in today’s industry customer relationship management is of great importance, these companies and organizations have turned their attention to this point. On the other hand, regarding the environmental issues like gradual warming of the earth, climate changes highly depend on increase in consumption. [9, 11] It should be noted that environment has converted to a vital and critical issue for all people both as producers and customers while traditional marketing pays too much attention to customer’s requirements regardless of social welfare and environmental problems. [13] This issue has overwhelmed all dimensions of manufacturing organizations affecting marketing and has resulted in “green marketing”. Thus, they are constantly introducing green products so that they can protect the environment, and the customers can reach their desires. This goal is only achievable through green marketing. [3] Polanski (2001) defines green marketing as all designed activities to create and facilitate exchange for the purpose of satisfying human needs and desires with minimum loss made to the environment.[10] Green marketing is in touch with a vast area of activities such as adjustment of products, change in production process, and change in packing. These changes should match the advertisement of the products. The use of technologies of customer relationship management makes presentation of services to customers and the services presented to partners very practical and efficient. [12] The first step in applying customer relationship management in an organization lies in organizational grounds related to customer relationship management. Otherwise, any attempt to deploy customer relationship management in an organization is in vain. [8] Customer relationship management is defined as collection of steps taken to develop, maintain, and optimize a long-lasting and valuable relationship between customers and organizations. Customer relationship management is a trading strategy for choosing and managing effective relationship with customers in order to